25 years after Harvey Road inferno, St. John's is still nervous about fire

If time holds true to a perilous pattern, the City of St. John's is now halfway to the next inferno.

Thursday night marked 25 years since the last major fire ripped through the downtown — emaciating Harvey Road to the bare bones and ashes of structures once occupied as houses, restaurants, stores and service centres.

It came like a haunting reminder of some unrelenting curse.

Every 50 years, this place burns.

"That threat exists to this day," says Fred Hollett, the province's former fire commissioner.

Hollett dedicated months of his life to the ash and rubble on Harvey Road. Somewhere out there, he says, there is a report with his name on the cover.

Behind that cover, in the findings of a meticulous investigation, there is one word repeated over and over.

Conflagration — an extensive fire that destroys a great deal of land or property.

"A fire that takes on a life of its own," Hollett said.

And an eerie symbolism, too.

The Harvey Road fire happened 100 years after the Great Fire of 1892 laid ruin to the city, and 50 years after 99 people perished inside the Knights of Columbus hostel.

All hands to central station

Don Byrne got the call around 10 p.m.

He hopped in his vehicle and headed downtown to fight a fire. He began switching through radio stations and was surprised by what he heard.

The newsreaders were calling for all firefighters to head to the city's central station immediately.

As he got closer to the scene, he understood why.

"There were flankers really as big as dinner plates all around you. It was just all consuming when you looked at it. It was bigger than anything we'd ever seen."

The fire had started at the Church Lad's Brigade (CLB) Armoury — a 100-year-old wooden structure, built like a castle.

Before long, flames shot from the windows and were stoked by heavy winds.

It spread to the neighbouring buildings, a Dominion grocery store and a government services building.

There were points that night, the wind was different.- Don Byrne, current deputy fire chief

Men and women arrived at the fire station by the dozen. They were instructed to gear up and walk the short distance through falling embers onto Harvey Road.

Byrne was in awe of the flames and the force of the heat.

"It creates its own wind," he said of the fire. "There were points that night, the wind was different. [It] was being created by that conflagration."

Small businesses burned to the ground

The wind eventually carried it across the road from the CLB, where it ignited the roof of the Big R — an iconic fish and chips restaurant on Harvey Road.

"We couldn't believe it," said Karen Forward, whose family owned the restaurant for decades. "It just caught so fast."

The top floor of the building was home to their paper products — napkins, plates, menus. It lit like kindling, leaving customers and employees scrambling to escape.

Forward was at a Christmas party when she got a call saying there was a fire. An hour later, she got another call. The family business was gone.

She already had three kids to feed. A few days after Christmas, she found out she was pregnant with twins.

"It was a lot of pressure, a few days later when you realize — 'Oh my God, this is for real.'"

History gone up in flames

As the early morning hours arrived, Keith Arns and his fellow CLB colleagues headed home to get some sleep.

Arns was one of the first bystanders on scene, arriving before flames were visible from outside the armoury. He watched the fire grow, spread and eat everything in its path.

"It was a raging inferno," he recalled.

He saw the firefighters battle high winds to stop the fire from reaching the row houses on Long's Hill, where the disaster could have turned deadly.

Arns couldn't help but see bitter timing in the fire. The CLB was just wrapping up its 100-year anniversary celebrations.

Gone with it was the work of William Tilley, their 78-year-old archivist who dedicated all his free time to collecting a century's worth of memorabilia.

"We lost pretty well all of our original artifacts from 1892 to 1992," he said. "To lose the building on our 100th anniversary was devastating to everybody."

First glimpse at destruction

The sun came up through a haze of smoke on Dec. 22, 1992.

Byrne was still there, hosing down the ashes around the ruins of buildings, when a feeling hit him.

"It was the stark reality of what had happened overnight and the amount of damage," he said. "It was just … It was just phenomenal. It looked like a war zone."

The brick facade of a Dominion grocery store was still standing, but the building itself was gone.

The armoury was reduced to nothing.

A social services building had burned to the ground, leaving only a solitary concrete vault standing in the rubble.

"That's the picture that stays with me … It was like a bomb had hit and destroyed everything."

You saw what was left. There was virtually total destruction.- Fred Hollett, former fire commissioner

Seeing the mess in the daylight for the first time, Forward thought of images she'd grown up seeing — pictures of the citywide fire in 1892.

Her mother was distraught. Just two months before the fire, she had finished renovating the restaurant. Forward doesn't remember what they spoke about the day after the fire, but in days to come the decision was made — they had to rebuild.

Tilley, who refused to watch the fire the night before, walked to the nearest store that day and bought a copy of the Evening Telegram. He cut out pictures of the fire and tucked them away.

"That was the day I started to rebuild the archives," he later told Arns.

Hollett's investigation wrapped up the following October, and found no clear cause for the inferno.

To this day, rumours persist that there were children playing with matches behind the armoury before it went up.

In a press conference in 1993, Hollett said they had eliminated the possibility of arson. His best guess was an electrical spark inside the ladies washroom of the 100-year-old building.

"You saw what was left," he told media at the time. "There was virtually total destruction. So at this point in time, we have to put it down to a probable electrical [short]."

The fire caused $13 million in damage, but could have been far worse, Hollett said. If not for the response from more than 100 firefighters, they may have lost the entire downtown core.

A community rises above

The weeks and months following the Harvey Road fire were filled with heartwarming stories.

The CLB built a new home — this time made of stone — and William Tilley hired a team of students that summer to track down every mention of the CLB Armoury in the city's media outlets and get copies.

He built a new museum, which was named after him in 2006. He was honoured for 90 years of service in 2016.

Tilley passed away last week and was buried the day before the 25th anniversary of the fire that claimed his life's work.

He was 103 years old.

Karen Forward and her family built a new restaurant on their land and were selling fish and chips again by March 1.

The family members started the work themselves, clearing away the debris as soon as the fire department gave them the OK.

They rushed to get everything done, but were rewarded with huge support from customers.

"Oh my God, the community was excellent," Forward said. "It was like madness for about the first month. Everybody wanted to get in and see the new restaurant."

The Big R was the first business to rebuild. Within a year, others began to sprout up and open their doors. The new armoury was opened in 1994.

Harvey Road recovered.

Can this happen again?

Don Byrne doesn't believe in curses.

The city has been faced with a horrendous fire every five decades since 1846 — every 50 years on the nose since 1892. There's been accidental fires, rumours of German sabotage and allegations of arson against schoolchildren.

There's been 106 lives lost, and thousands of livelihoods spoiled along the way.

So what about the year 2042?

"I guess there will always be those who look ahead and have that thought," Byrne said. "Me, I look at it [as] what today brings, it brings, and I'm not going to worry about what some wisdoms say will happen again."

But that doesn't mean he won't be prepared.

St. John's is a city by the sea, surrounded by rock, and yet it is most susceptible to fire.

The city's downtown is mostly made of wood. Its colourful row houses stand side-by-side, and they burn the same way. High winds come off the water, tickling sparks into flames and blowing flames into incendiary forces.

Byrne doesn't believe in curses, but he does believe in the real threat looming over the city at any given moment.

"There's a lot of people who say it can't happen. But it can happen — and it can happen again."